After Oakland hills fire, residents build off-the-wall homes

Since the 1991 Oakland Hills fire, the homes in the neighborhood have become larger and range in architectural styles.

He shifted the gear to neutral and parked the car along the side of the road. “There,” he said, pointing out the open window to a cluster of houses across the street. “That one is modern and the one next to it is traditional. Then you have a contemporary California ranch style house and over there you have an English Tudor.”

Robert Pennell, a partner at Jarvis Architects, squinted behind his gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses; the narrow hillside streets were drenched with sunlight as he continued his tour of the neighborhood that he helped to rebuild after the Oakland hills fire. Although there are a few trees to offer shade, they are young and surprisingly sparse. It wasn’t just the houses that burned, he said—much of the vegetation, including the canopy of trees that once shaded the streets in this sleepy, secluded neighborhood, were burned to a crisp.

“Everybody says it was so much prettier before, but what was pretty was there were a bunch of trees there,” said Pennell, his maroon PT Cruiser zipping through block after block of houses he helped to design. “Most of the houses were actually very shitty.”

On October 20, 1991, the hills above North Oakland and South Berkeley were prey to a three-day urban fire that destroyed over 3,500 homes and instigated a building revolution that permanently transformed the neighborhood for decades to come. Before the fire, the hillside was littered with small, older homes, some dating as far back as the 1920s and 1930s. They had a very traditional feel to them, Pennell said, and consisted mainly of French and English cottages and colonial style homes.

But after the fire, the Oakland hills neighborhoods drastically transformed into a community of clashing architectural styles, innovative designs, and large, looming structures. Many residents got large insurance settlements for their homes after the fire which allowed them to build such extravagant new houses and builders and developers also zeroed in on the area constructing larger, more expensive houses in the hope of reaping a higher benefit. Modern materials such as cement panels, copper shingles, corrugated metal, Japanese ceramic tiles and smooth stucco cover formerly shingled cottages and colonial houses. A hodgepodge of styles—ranging from Mediterranean and Tudor to modern and Craftsman—can now be found on the same block.

Residents saw the fire as an excuse to build the house they always wanted, said Pennell, and developers and architects followed their lead. “These people got a do-over, and if they had enough cajones to actually do it, that was pretty cool,” he said.

Many residents, however, had more modest plans for reconstruction and wanted to rebuild what they had lost, but with a modern twist. “They wanted to feel like they were coming home, but they didn’t want it to be the very home they left,” Pennell said. “Although they had bought the house that they liked, if given the option, they were like, ‘Well, I can tweak it a bit.’ It’s like ordering off the menu and deciding to add a little ketchup on it and a side order of fries.”